Rick Goodman

Rick Goodman
Born	U.S.
Occupation	Video game developer

Rick Goodman is a video game developer and the founder and owner of the now-defunct Stainless Steel Studios. He is best known for the RTS games he designed, such as Age of Empires and Empire Earth.

In 1995 Goodman co-founded Ensemble Studios together with his brother, Tony Goodman, and John Boog-Scott. Their first project was Age of Empires (AoE), in which Goodman worked as Lead Designer. After the game's release, it became an overnight sensation and Goodman became one of the most recognized game developers in the world. Because of the success of the game, some said that Goodman had invented in AoE "the most well recognized game interface for RTS games", because afterward many games like it began to use the AoE game interface: a mini map, unit and building controls, the name of your civilization and the age which you are currently in on top of the screen and others.

After Age of Empires, Goodman left Ensemble to form his own studio with Dara-Lynn Pelechatz: Stainless Steel Studios in 1998. Pelechatz told GameSpy that Goodman couldn't decide what name to give for his studio, so he opened a catalog with the plan to baptise the studio with the very first thing he encountered.

In 2001, Stainless Steel, under Goodman, created Empire Earth. The game, which was published by Sierra Entertainment, offered many new features, including a 3D view of the world, impressive zoom-in and zoom-out features, and a timeline that spanned from pre-history to the twenty-second century (over 500,000 years). The game won the GameSpy PC "Game-of-the-Year 2001" Award. According to some, Empire Earth was what Goodman wanted Age of Empires to be. PC Gamer said in an article about Empire Earth that it feels like it's the gold edition of the entire AoE-series (which is all the AoE games, including the unreal games such as a AoE IV and V).

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